“We are going to be short 60,000 euros”: negotiations around the price of milk look set to be tense between breeders and large retailers

This text corresponds to part of the transcription of the report above. Click on the video to watch it in full. Guillaume Ferey's farm in Englesqueville-en-Auge (Calvados), in Normandy, received a visit from major retailers on the morning of Friday, November 6: E.

Leclerc, Carrefour and Auchan. While commercial negotiations will soon begin, these brand representatives want to show an attentive image of the difficulties of dairy farmers. “Everyone has to make a living from their work, that’s not a subject.

And it's not even a topic in the negotiation boxes. But indeed, all the players who participate in a sector must take their share of responsibility", comments Pascal Robert, representative of Leclerc, Federation of Commerce and Distribution. With the repeated heat waves in 2026, each cow produced up to 200 liters of milk less compared to last year.

And the costs have increased considerably. “44,000 euros less on milk, 15,000 euros more in charges. We are going to be short 60,000 euros in fact,” figures Guillaume Ferey, FNSEA dairy farmer.

Negotiations will begin on December 1. This year he is asking for at least 8 euro cents more per liter of milk sold. But it is not the large retailers, visiting him with whom he can negotiate. It is the middlemen, the manufacturers who buy milk from him.

Problem is, he fears that he will not win his case with them, as in 2025. "The industrialists come to tell them, like last year, when they asked for a 3.5% increase and they only got 0.5%: 'finally no, there was no revaluation, so we cannot pay for milk'", summarizes Olivier Mevel, lecturer in management sciences at the University of Brest. Commercial negotiations between manufacturers and mass retailers will officially begin on December 1st.

Machine-translated from French